School fee, employees & teachers' salaries in Telangana go up

Hyderabad: It sounds shocking, but, if sources in the State Education department (SED) are to be believed students in Telangana have been studying syllabus that has not been changed much in the past 15 years.

It may be mentioned here that the State government has allocated Rs 2,000 crore for the academic year 2021-22 for improving school infrastructure. Similarly, it has proposed to spend another Rs 2,000 crore on the same head during 2022-23.

Speaking to The Hans India, sources in SED said, "the syllabus based on the national curriculum framework of 2005 had been adopted in 2010 in the united Andhra Pradesh. With five years delay, it was implemented across 23 districts of the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh."

After this, the only changes brought forth were introducing history, culture and few other topics related to Telangana after the State formation. Besides, it came up with Telugu language books as part of the State government's policy to make Telugu a compulsory language of learning by all school students.

Speaking to THI, a senior SED official said there was a lot of exercise and process which takes place in adopting a syllabus. However, five years was too long a period for adopting the National Curriculum Framework-2005 in the united AP.

The current syllabus studied by school students in Telangana is at least 10-12 years old. Fee in the schools teaching the same syllabus has drastically gone up. Salaries of teachers have also gone up. But when it comes to the real issue of improving the standards focusing on changes needed in the syllabus remained a non-issue.

"It is a welcome sign on the part of the State government to make special allocations to improve school infrastructure. But, good buildings, chairs, deployment of technologies alone won't bring qualitative changes if attention is not paid to the curriculum improvement and training to teachers.

A retired senior SED official said: "Successive governments have been increasing salaries of its employees and teachers under the PRC. But they are failing to assure quality service delivery to people."

The reason: the governments are more interested to win over the employees and teachers unions for their support. On the other, the unions have been harping on their rights but not on their responsibilities.

In turn, the issue of enhancement of salaries turns out to be a private affair between the government, employees of the department and teachers without any bearing on their performance. Whether the government, employees and teachers exist for students or vice versa remains a million-dollar question.

When asked, Telangana State United Teachers' Federation (TS-UTF) general secretary Chava Ravi said, "there is no clause ever incorporated in the terms of reference in the PRC by the State governments related to enhancement of salaries linked to performance. It should either be included in the terms of reference or come up with a separate regulation for the same," he added.